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I recall coming across something recently too (I forgot who it was) about the PV vortex and how it seemed to be much slower with its seasonal demise through the spring so far. It's like the hemisphere on our side of the globe is dying to get us into an early summer but the lower stratosphere/upper troposphere is still programed to be blocky. Maybe rooting for these early season anomalous warm spells isn't a good idea lol...I mean eventually the ridging in place responsible for that warmth has to get shunted east (unless its a scenario in which the ridge just totally breaks down) and what happens when that ridging shunts east? You are building those positive heights into Greenland and it's hello block. With this we've fed the Arctic domain what it needs to become manifested in what it wants to do and the result is...weeks of hell. One thing that makes me really nervous going into May is the signal for some stout ridging to develop across the north Pacific and into the Gulf of Alaska. Eventually these teleconnections should begin to break down and their influence subside, but this opens the door to get omega block like moving into May.

Weeklies

Weeklies

40s and 50 down here for my sons baptism

April 22 1874: Unseasonably cold air moves into Minnesota. The low is 23 degrees at the Twin Cities. For Wednesday, April 22, 2026 1883 - An outbreak of tornadoes from Louisiana to Kansas claimed the lives to 200 persons. One of the tornadoes destroyed the town of Beauregard MS. (David Ludlum) 1980 - A record April heat wave sent the mercury up to the 100 degree mark in Iowa. (The Weather Channel) 1987 - Fifteen cities in the southeastern U.S. reported new record high temperatures for the date. The afternoon high of 96 degrees at Pensacola FL established a record for the month of April. (The National Weather Summary) 1988 - Heavy snow fell over northern Nebraska, with 15 inches reported at Mullen. Heavy snow also blanketed the mountains of northern Arizona, with 16 inches reported at Munds Park. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) 1989 - Twenty-seven cities in the central U.S. reported record high temperatures for the date. The high of 96 degrees at Omaha was an April record, and the high of 100 degrees at Lubbock TX equaled their record for April. Hill City KS and Liberal KS tied for honors as the hot spot in the nation with afternoon highs of 103 degrees. (The National Weather Summary) 1990 - Thunderstorms produced severe weather from the Southern and Central High Plains to northwest Florida during the afternoon and evening. Thunderstorms produced wind gusts to 67 mph at Gillette WY, hail two inches in diameter west of Roswell NM, and deluged Cheyenne OK with 8.68 inches of rain leaving some parts of the town under five feet of water. Temperatures reached the low 90s in the north central U.S. Chamberlain SD and Pickstown SD tied Presidio TX for honors as the hot spot in the nation with afternoon highs of 94 degrees. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) 2011 - Lambert International Airport in St. Louis experiences extensive damage as it is hit by a group of tornados, blowing out windows in the main terminal and tearing the roof off Concourse C. Five people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries from shattered glass and flying debris.

Oh, completely agreed! ( full disclosure, I'm hoping for it). I don't wanna give Kevin any reason at all to start pimping drought fallacies in attempts to set up the dystopian d-drip doses all summer... meanwhile, my lawn stays green until mid august. Yeah, as far as the NAO handling... it's ( we know this -) obviously a stochastic index domain... but I sort of ignore the distractions of the individual model runs and just rely on a combination of 3 basics: the 5 day running mean of the synoptic structure; climatology; personal experience - as you mentioned, that -NAOs tend to blossom/lag after a period of usual early warmth - particularly when said warmth is over the eastern mid latitude continent. This latter need correlative proof and is personally anecdotal, but it is a late winter and spring phenomenon I have noted over many years. Just combining all that gunk... -NAO appears set up and well ?

An OK call. A little slow with frontal passage that went through yesterday. System will be moving through starting tomorrow.

Sorry man, I moved out of Prince Frederick and took the rain (and snow?) with me to the mountains. It really is happening, I knew it would. My old yard in PF is burning up. Driest month ever there since I had started keeping track.

People would probably hate this but like I mentioned yesterday, a Nor'easter bringing a region wide soaking wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But lets just hope we start to flip things not too long after. I've been intrigued by this idea over the past few days and it got me thinking about what you said last week regarding there being some atmospheric hangover in the modeling from the current NAO we are in. Admittedly, I have not looked at ensembles yet and just going off some OP runs, so not sure what kind of signal the ensembles have, but just looking at the NAO forecast, there seems to be a bit of spread in the NAO forecast moving forward, but the signal is for the NAO becoming less negative over time...but if you play out the OP (GFS) that signal looks just opposite. So I am wondering if perhaps the OP might be a bit out too lunch. Looking at ensembles though would certainly help answer this question But I don't really care about that far ahead yet so haven't put any heavy detailed thought into it lol

Thought I'd post the GL ice maps. Still some out there in the N areas. Pretty robust year overall. Ships had been getting stuck in DLH earlier, as well as on the upper, and lower sides of the Soo Locks. Much better now, except for the lower Huron side which is keeping the CGC Mackinaw busy.

It looks 'to me' like that's sort of symbolic as a last hurrah, like a winter death gasp before those in the room swear to seeing a glow exiting the body... Might even manifest as a bona fide coastal/Nor'easter ( before gallooting, know that it would swept rains). And I wouldn't be shocked if a new moon is scheduled then, too. That's always like that. Jesus. I've stopped fighting why and just assume at this point. The Earth's atmosphere always wants to pick on Block Island during full moon/spring tide. Just use the modeled atmosphere to tell when the spring tide is there - without even using astro charts ... heh. If there isn't a spring tide, then the modeled low ends up not happening. "Seems" is not the same as correlation though so... tfwiw. Anyway, after that would-be event ( or just the 30th -2nd period in general), I sense a significant flip may occur - pun unavoidable. Lately I've seen very very subtle hints in the operational Euro model's extended artistry for blocking breakdowns. As of last night, the control version of both the EPS and the GEFs systems are nose diving the PNA very negative into the first week of the month. Mind us, this is the 22nd of April so it's not like that's a coon's age away. We'll see. I'm wondering if this time next week we're looking at an impressive see-saw warming over the eastern mid latitudes - above season/climo.

Nice couple of hours of rain down here. Still a bit of drizzle. Grass/weeds are happy.

Hopefully some real rain this weekend

It's a more neutral north Pacific response, which means other hemispheric players are more influential. In 2023, the most prominent players were a raging +WPO/+NAO/-PDO. This is why I said that the NAO and the state of the extra tropical Pacific will be so crucial this year. I think that fact that 2023 resembled 1997 was largely due to the extreme +WPO both seasons. Dec 1997 actually had some blocking, hence the major SNE snow right before xmas. The PDO was also positive. 1982 was -WPO....my guess is we end up with a better extra tropical patten than 2023.

Ray and Chris, If Nino 3.4 is at +2C vs 1991-2020 and surrounding tropics are also at +2C vs 1991-2020, there’s no warm El Niño tongue to do its forcing. Thus, it’s essentially neutral rather than super El Niño and officially is neutral for RONI. So, RONI is a better measure for strength of El Niño and La Niña for that matter. Do y’all agree? @bluewave

Think of the information that be gleaned from ENSO concerning the hemispheric response as a continuum of sorts...of both strength AND type. Climate change is exacerbating the perils of a reductive analysis that considers merely strength of ENSO because the fact of the matter is that the hemispheric response is becoming more nuanced and varied.

Not sure of the year but remember it. Looking at my records, my last freeze in 2016 was on 4/21. In 2020 the last freeze was 5/14 and it was on 5/15 in 2023, maybe one of those years?

Simply knowing the strength isn't very helpful if you don't know what the response will be....quite the contrary, it can actually be misleading to a forecaster, which is the trap that I fell into in 2023.

Yea......look at the absolute value of each to obtain a general idea of how strong the event is, but more importantly, it's the relationship between the RONI and ONI that is indicative of the type of response that ENSO may induce around the hemisphere. The latter is what we really need to understand because knowing how strong said response will be is pretty useless if we have no idea what the response will be. I suspect we are going to need the RONI to be at least equivalent or greater than the ONI to avoid yet another muted Aleutian low/se trough couple response. If we have a very strong El Nino with a lagging ONI, as was the case in 2023, then you get a very strong RIDGING response over se Canada and an Aleutian low/se trough that is still meager.

Not as deep. Those will forever remain with more expected next winter.

I agree to a point, but it seems likely we will get multiple opportunities over the next two weeks. Sometimes a few .5" rainfalls is better than one big 2" rainfall for busting drought. Hopefully we can stop the bleeding anyway

You can actually see the thermal processing of the lower levels on the 06z UKMET for Friday rather nicely... This lobe of modestly warmed 850 mb layout bulbing up over SNE around 21z is definitely because of the sun + compressed d-slope working it over. This is one of those 60 day dandies Brian was mentioning yesterday. I also recall mentioning a couple three days ago that the pattern didn't really look crushingly negative to me - more like neutral with an offsetting lean. It's just hard to get us BN frankly, unless we have more direct feeds of perpetual inject into the region - hint hint, which we did this last winter

Are the scars as deep as the ones you have from a series of failed winters?

More like the whole state.TN leads leads the nation with 46% being nocturnal tornadoes